The second day of our trip ended with our weary traveling-bones in the small town of Henderson in western Nebraska. The trip that day was a lovely reminder of why we fell in love with Nebraska 11 years ago: All those beautiful and seemingly endless miles of the green farm belt, nostalgically beautiful Mid-west landscape of farmers working in the fields and young crops blowing in that familiar and wild horizontal Nebraska wind. In the Mid-west there are “real” trees, firm bold trees that grow into strong old oaks as they push against that constant Nebraska prairie wind, stretching up and broadly outward, defying the wind, yet the local joke is the trees would fall over if the wind ever stopped blowing.
The day is over, it is late, and we decided to stop for dinner and to do Wi-Fi at McD's in Henderson, totally unsure where we should stay the night. We are determined to camp our way across the U.S. but we are off our travel plans and are unsure where to stay. We learn quickly that our “tourist-like-appearance” is more apparent than we realize, as well as our concern over where to stay the night. Suddenly as we are about to give up, a woman walks up and begins to tell us that she “overheard” us talking about our concerns. She and her husband decided we were in need of some good old fashioned neighborly help: Within minutes we were talking as if we are all old friends, where we’re from, where we’re going and why…and they are local homesteader folk from Henderson out at McD’s for summer with their young son. They tell us all about the local camping site up the road, Prairie Oasis Campground, steering us away from the nearby KOA which is more visible but not nearly as nice. An elderly gentleman walks by our table and soon we are introduced to him as the former mayor of Henderson and the back-door-neighbor to the Prairie Oasis Campground. Before he leaves on his way, he lets us know that if we have any trouble during our stay, we should just knock on his door and he and his wife will be happy to lend a helping hand. As the couple said goodbye, the wife turned and as she smiled she said, "Hey, if you chicken out on the camping plans, the motel next door might be small, but it is actually very nice—a good place to stay!" The husband nodded in agreement and then they scooted out the door with their young son in hand. Instantly Gus began to laugh that all-too-familiar-hard-Gus-laugh, slapping his knee he turned to me and said, "Only in Nebraska!" Wagons ho...
The day is over, it is late, and we decided to stop for dinner and to do Wi-Fi at McD's in Henderson, totally unsure where we should stay the night. We are determined to camp our way across the U.S. but we are off our travel plans and are unsure where to stay. We learn quickly that our “tourist-like-appearance” is more apparent than we realize, as well as our concern over where to stay the night. Suddenly as we are about to give up, a woman walks up and begins to tell us that she “overheard” us talking about our concerns. She and her husband decided we were in need of some good old fashioned neighborly help: Within minutes we were talking as if we are all old friends, where we’re from, where we’re going and why…and they are local homesteader folk from Henderson out at McD’s for summer with their young son. They tell us all about the local camping site up the road, Prairie Oasis Campground, steering us away from the nearby KOA which is more visible but not nearly as nice. An elderly gentleman walks by our table and soon we are introduced to him as the former mayor of Henderson and the back-door-neighbor to the Prairie Oasis Campground. Before he leaves on his way, he lets us know that if we have any trouble during our stay, we should just knock on his door and he and his wife will be happy to lend a helping hand. As the couple said goodbye, the wife turned and as she smiled she said, "Hey, if you chicken out on the camping plans, the motel next door might be small, but it is actually very nice—a good place to stay!" The husband nodded in agreement and then they scooted out the door with their young son in hand. Instantly Gus began to laugh that all-too-familiar-hard-Gus-laugh, slapping his knee he turned to me and said, "Only in Nebraska!" Wagons ho...
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